Law of the Jungle
by GunnyStacker
Summary: Spartan-III Headhunters, highly trained government sanctioned sociopaths armed with the finest military hardware available. And one finds himself alone in the city where anyone can be anything. I'm sure it will turn out fine…
1. Chapter 1

Law of the Jungle

Prologue: Silent Night

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE: While viewing the Headhunters motion comic is not required, I highly recommend it, plus it's awesome.**

Zootopia was in the midst of winter, having over a year pass since the Night Howler panic that nearly turned the city into a dystopia. Dawn Bellwether was in prison and an air of normality had returned to the again peaceful city will little other action in the news apart from the asteroid that had impacted on the far side of the moon eight days ago and even that was quickly fading from the public consciousness. Meanwhile far below on the planet's surface a bead of condensation condensed upon the outer left edge of the department store window, trailing down from slightly greater than the window's half height, catching a beautiful prism of the world within the well heated store and the nighttime blizzard that raged on the other side. Most animals found such a minute miracle of physics, hydrodynamics and particle physics mundane from the sheer abundance of water that existed in the world. It went unnoticed by the mature snow leopardess who pretended to be looking over the rack of overpriced winter coats. Beautiful as they were, she found the image reflected off the window to be far more interesting.

About thirty feet away to her five o'clock stood a pair of polar bears at the jewelry counter with one particularly unique individual whose stature was unbefitting of his self-adopted title. Even with her predatory predisposition, her hearing wasn't quite sharp enough to hear clearly what the fat little artic shrew was saying to the very nervous young male arctic fox over the plethora of other shoppers. That was where the noise amplifying microphone came in, cleverly disguised as a pair of seemingly inconsequential headphones jacked into the tape recorder tucked away inside the breast pocket of the snow leopardess' tan, button-up winter jacket.

"Tell me, do you know what this is, kind sir?" he asked in his Rodentian accent, presenting a tiny object in his paw for the clerk to take.

The well-groomed arctic fox took the offered item, examining it closely. "It appears to be an engagement ring sir." Came his outwardly pleasant answer that failed to hide the gleam of fear flickering behind his eyes.

"My now son-in-law bought this ring here when he was going to propose to my daughter some months ago, and now that my Fru Fru is wed, she no longer need wear it." The mob boss calmly explained.

The fox's expression relaxed slightly with his smile growing more genuine. "Why thank you sir, here at Stacey's we-"

Vito Moleone raised his right paw in a pausing gesture. "I was not finished." He said. "Do you notice anything peculiar about this ring? A man under my employ took notice of a particular detail concerning this ring when he had chance to examine it himself."

Now looking far more nervous, the fox inspected the ring more closely under his jeweler's loupe pulled from his pocket. After a minute of scrutiny upon the tiny golden halo topped with a pin tip sized diamond, the fox shook his head almost undetectably. "I'm sorry sir, I don't know what you mean." The fox said very politely, he would be sweating if he had the pores for it. "If there is a problem, I'm not quite sure what it is."

"The gem upon this ring is fake, _cubic zirconium_." He said, quoting the man who had informed him of the disingenuous nature of the gem.

"Sir," the now plainly nervous fox began. "We don't falsely advertise any of our items, if you're-"

"So, you accuse me of being a liar?" Moleone said calmly. Behind him, scowls began to form upon the faces of the pair of polar as their muscles tensed.

"N-no of course not," the fox stammered. "I w-was just stating that if your son-in-law came here to buy an engagement ring-"

Moleone interrupted again once more. "So now you accuse my son-in-law of speaking lies."

"When! When," the fox hastily clarified, his smile twitching. "When he came in I would have clearly informed him of the origin of stone on ring."

"So then, your act was one of a different sort of negligence." Moleone spoke plainly with a frown. "You allowed my future son-in-law to walk out of this store, allowed him to put that ring upon my daughter which she wore for ten months. Through your carelessness, you disrespected my daughter, my family and myself."

The fox's smile was now fully gone, replaced with a distraught expression of horror. "How, how, how could I have known who it was, who he was going to propose to?"

"And you continue to disrespect me with your excuses but I am a forgiving man." Moleone digressed. "I invite you to my home this evening where we can work out a way for you to atone for your mistakes, both intentional and unintentional. I would suggest you attend fox, I would hate to involve family in this private matter."

Far outside the third story window where this scene was taking place, a high-tension wire was being drawn back making slight metallic notes above the deafening wind on a building across the street.

Returning to the warm confines of the building, the lady leopard bit her lip. Technically, Moleone hadn't made any direct threats to that fox but _if_ that fox disappeared, went into Moleone's mansion and never came out, it would give her grounds for a warrant, as grim as it was.

A grey look fell upon the fox's snowy face, his ears down in as a morbid feeling was undoubtedly upon him. "Okay," he spoke above a whisper.

"Splendid," Mr. Big said with a smile of his own. "Viktor, would you please show our friend to the limo?"

The smaller, but nonetheless imposing polar bear, Viktor Stanislav, stepped forward to the counter, his crossed over paws separating to reach out at the fox, the few animals around adverting their gaze to avoid being implicated as witnesses.

Only the leopardess intently watching it all witnessed the moment when it all went to hell.

Paired with the raucous shattering of the large window the leopardess had been starring at that now brought in the howling arctic wind that washed over her fur and stung her eyes. A woman's scream sang out above it all, the crescendo that queued a chorus of others that marked the start of a panic. She swung herself around seeing that Viktor had been flung violently backward into a concrete support pillar seven feet away, pinned to it by what looked to be an arrow much to her shock. The bear's eyes were bulging and his paw gripped on the arrow piercing the right side of his chest, trying in vain to pull it out of him and the pillar behind it was lodged into in the last moments before he faded away. The remaining three at or near the jewelry counter flinched at the sudden, unexpected happening while the leopardess felt some unseen force shove her by the shoulder to the ground.

With practiced feline grace, she managed to spin herself halfway and just barely catch her fall with her right paw upon the carpeted floor in effort to see who had pushed her over. What the leopard saw could not easily be described at first glance. To her there seemed to be an area of distortion, like warping in the glass one could see in the older buildings around Zootopia, only this was life-sized and impossibly appearing freely in the air. Time seemed to slow as the next moments unfolded. A series of muted gunshots sounded inside the store, the source not made clear until a fraction of a second later when a bizarre ghostly figure manifested. A seven-foot-tall figure armored in strange plates of material and tactical pouches with an odd golden warped dome of a helmet and a cloak hanging off its back, in its paws was held a military-grade rifle fitted with a silencer and an accoutrement of other features that she did not have time to recognize.

More screams sounded as the panicked customers fled in terror as the now solid appearing attacker advanced toward the jewelry counter. The leopardess' head darted over in its direction, a gasp escaping her fur-trimmed lips upon the sight of the fallen motionless form of the other polar bear she knew to be Boris Koslov, a pool of dark red spreading upon the peach colored marble tile around him. A few feet away at the foot of the counter she saw Moleone drop down, the aging shrew injuring his leg from the fall evidenced by the limp he had as he tried to escape from the attacker who was all but leisurely walking toward him of what she could discern under the racks of clothes that partly obscured her view.

 _No!_ she couldn't let it end like this, not after all this time, after all the hard work she had put into trying to lock that vermin up. With barely audible growl, she pushed herself up, drawing her service pistol from inside her jacket, quietly stalking forth upon the soft pads of her feet through the several clothing racks, until she had the armored attacker sighted, his or her back to the leopardess and a small squealing mass beneath an armored boot. Slung over its torso, she saw what indeed appeared to be some kind of high-tech archery bow along with an odd quiver of arrows, each adhered to what she assumed to be a pair of magnetic strips on a flat triangular plane of composite material. How a bow and arrow could be powerful enough to go through a polar bear and pin him to concrete seemed beyond the veil of possibility despite evidence to the contrary only a few feet away.

"Stop it right there! Detective Yasmine Barısqa, ZPD" she commanded, buying the attention of the attacker marked by the slight upturn of the helmet. "Place your weapon on the counter and let the shrew go." She ordered as she drew closer, now upon the tile and about fifteen feet away. The figure let go of the silver rifle's pistol-grip, placing the weapon on the counter with their left arm. The leopardess moved around right to get a clear view of what the perpetrator was doing forward of the obscuring cloak they wore. They had given up the rifle but Moleone was still firmly underfoot. "I said let the shrew go!" She commanded with greater authority.

The exotic looking helmet turned toward Yasmine, the response was a wet crunch as the boot came down.

A shocked expression befell Yasmine's features that lasted for but a moment before hardening into a determined scowl. "You are under arrest for murder." She dictated as she drew closer, now less than six feet away. "Put your paws above your head."

"I'm not the one you should be pointing that gun at," came a gruff male voice from the armored figure that held almost a playful tone.

"You just killed three men, I think its fine where it is." Yasmine spoke back with a slight baring of her teeth.

He grunted. "Two, and the little furry guy frantically pushing the silent alarm behind the counter right now probably would've never been seen again if they were still breathing. Far as I can tell, I just did you a favor."

"Yeah, you're a regular upstanding citizen." Yasmine said with a sarcastic tone, reaching to pull her cuffs from her jacket with her left paw while failing to notice the movement on her far right.

In an impossible burst of speed, the armored attacker was on her, twisting her body right. He had hold of her right arm with both of his long, articulate, five fingered paws, pulling her uncomfortably tight to his back, so tight she couldn't pull her left arm free of her coat, while his right paw slid over hers, encompassing it in what would have been an intimate expression under other circumstances. Yasmine's eyes caught the sight of Viktor, still alive, if only just, a pistol in his right paw, pointed at them. The forefinger belonging to Yasmine's captor pressed down over hers on the trigger. Yasmine was forced to watch as her weapon was used to end another mammal's life. Viktor Stanislav fired back, two of his shots flying wild as he himself was struck in his gut twice, then the center of his chest. A lucky shot finally caught the armored assailant, unexpectedly bringing a shimmering sheet of gold appearing over his form, making Yasmine flinch for just a second but she clearly saw the final shot that ended it all. The slide racked back and one final bullet from her pistol struck Viktor just behind his left eye, spilling the fragile contents of his skull upon the pillar in a grim crimson impression of a Rorschach test. It made Yasmine a sick feeling in her stomach, feeling so used, no better than an accomplice to this mammal's murder.

The perpetrator then turned his attention back to her, twisting about and laying a volley of lightning fast blows the snow leopardess found herself helpless to defend against as he struck her kidneys, ribs, knee and the joint of her right shoulder, laying her low on the heated marble tile. When she opened her eyes, she found the dead expressionless face of Boris Kosvlov staring blankly forever into the abyss, a pool of his own blood still readily spreading from his perforated corpse.

Yasmine's head darted back up to the perpetrator whose shadow loomed over her, making her wonder if she should now be fearing for her own life, racked in pain as she was and nearly helpless. It was the first time she got a look at his direct profile and it did not bode well. Over his lower abdominals were three sets of magazine pouches looking to hold maybe two apiece matched with a third large pouch on his left thigh opposite of a hefty looking sidearm on his right. Adjacent to a pair of pistol magazine pouches up on his belt. Looking at his odd helmet, Yasmine noticed the device attached to the right side, appearing to be a camera, making her wonder if someone else was watching her. Crossing over the right shoulder lay a bandoleer of four cylindrical devices that could only be grenades with the handle of a combat knife peeking out from under the foremost munition, but that was hardly the only one on his person. Yasmine counted five total, one imbedded into his left pauldron, another lengthy knife on his right calf, two sets of throwing knives held just above the pouch on his left thigh and one, foot-long knife that looked more like a small sword peeking out from behind his back. His left paw had hold on the stock of his assault rifle and in his right, Yasmine's semi-automatic service pistol which he appeared to be admiring. "Nice piece," he complimented, though it gave her no solace in hearing it. "Think I'll hang on to this, pretty sure I can put it to use it a hell of a lot better than you will." he said with an accusatory edge before tucking it away in a pouch behind his back. He turned away from her, moving to Viktor's body where he retrieved his bloody arrow that until then, held the body off the floor.

As he then moved to leave Yasmine, she yelled after him searching for perhaps any clue to his identity. "Who the hell are you?"

He grunted a laugh in return. "Headhunter Sierra-Bravo-Zero-One-Three, but that won't mean a damn thing to you, so...call me Leon."

It was an answer that only raised far more questions for Yasmine. Outside the window over the howling blizzard, she heard the wail of a patrol car siren down on the street and the piercing red and blue lights flashing up into the department store and frighteningly the perpetrator hardly seemed to pay it much mind at all, to the Detective's dread. She could only watch him walk back toward the broken window with his form fading back into a nigh-noticeable blur before disappearing completely against the frigid backdrop of night.

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE: Yes, this is my fourth story, I like rotating around to stories that each have a different flavor to them. This does not mean I have lost interest in the others permanently. If you want an idea of where I got my inspiration for Leon's appearance, check out Headhunter brainstorming by The-Chronothaur on DeviantArt.**


	2. Chapter 2

Law of the Jungle

Chapter 1: The Headhunter

Twenty minutes had passed since Vito Moleone's murder and his bodyguards at the hands of an unknown heavily armed assailant. Hopps and Wilde were first on the scene, having been assigned to patrol in the midst of the blizzard to be on the lookout for potentially imperiled citizens, though it was difficult to determine if this was the scene of a homicide or a terrorist attack by what had transpired.

The now closed department store was swarming with police from top to bottom. On the third-floor Yasmine leaned back against a pillar far away from the crime scene where CSI had just arrived to go to work and needed everyone to stay as much out of their way as possible with the exception of the officers who erected a plastic tarp to cover the broken window in order to prevent further contamination of evidence, what little there was. She had nothing to do but replay what had happened over and over in her mind while her icy blue eyes stared absently down at the floor with a sour expression.

"Yasmine," Hopps spoke beside her standing beside her fox partner, the little bunny doing her best to console the obviously troubled Detective. "From what you said, this guy sounds like he was a professional. A mercenary or something way out of our league," Judy offered as explanation for Yasmine's failings as an officer. "There's no way anyone could have been prepared for that."

"Detective, Barisqa," she then heard Chief Bogo's voice, snapping her out of her thoughts to see the cape buffalo striding forth under a heavy police issue winter coat.

"Chief,"

"What is it you wanted to tell me that couldn't be said over the radio?" he said, ever to the point as he always was.

Yasmine straightened herself up before the Chief. "Sir, it's about the perp…I, you're the person I think I can talk to without looking like I'm crazy."

"You said he was heavily armed and was wearing body armor." The Chief said plainly.

"It wasn't normal sir, it looked like he was wearing green plate armor and he had tactical gear layered over it."

Bogo cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "What, like something out of the natural history museum? You gave to be joking Detective."

Yasmine shook her head. "Sir, I'm not and that's not all, I saw him Chief, he turned invisible right in front of me."

"This isn't science fiction Barisqa, perps can't just turn invisible and disappear into the night like on a TV drama. Where's your proof?"

Further down from eye level, Officer Wilde snapped his fingers. "Cameras." He said. "Security office should be on this level if I remember right."

Hopps crossed her arms with a accusing look in her eyes. "And how would you know that? The top floor is the women's department."

"For your information, I know several individuals that spent some time up here in their teenage years."

The fur on Judy's cheeks bristled up in a blush at Nick's admitted teenage acts of perversion. "Okaaheheheey," laughed embarrassedly. "Let's just get going."

As promised Nick lead them to the security office, Judy shooting him a dirty look when she saw why he would remember where this was. "The underwear department? Ew, Nick, seriously?"

"Hey, we don't all grow up all wholesome on the family farm filled with starry-eyed ideals like you, Carrots." He replied with a smirk.

The door had an electronic lock on it, thankfully, the manufacturers always included an override code distributed to law enforcement agencies and emergency services in the case of dire situations. Judy wasn't sure if this qualified but Bogo didn't seem to mind as he entered the three-digit code. The door opened to a room slightly bigger than a closet with a small beaten-up server beside a tall wall of old CRT monitors and a dated control panel with what looked like a vintage analog keyboard. "Get to work Wilde, we don't have all day."

The fox hopped up into the worn office chair, completing a little spin before pulling himself up. "Jeeze, look at this outdated piece of crud, we're lucky they're not recording on VHS tapes." He said trying to figure out where to begin.

"Rewind the recording to around twenty-five minutes ago, try then." Yasmine suggested.

Nick found the rewind button beside the keyboard, pressing it twice to reverse the footage at X30 speed. During the wait, Nick scrutinized the control panel more closely. Finding the switch for the third-floor cameras marked in writing on a piece of tape over said button.

"Stop there," Yasmine instructed seeing the window shatter on the middle-left monitor. Nick stopped and played back the footage from the point just prior to the window shatter

The recording was in black and white, one would think that a store that raked in as much cash as Stacey's could afford color cameras, let alone electronic equipment from this decade.

"Oh, wait, Wilde stop the tape there." Yasmine said, remembering her tape recorder. Stars above she'd completely forgotten she even had it. The leopardess pulled the rather antiquated device from her breast pocket and rewound the two-hour length tape to around the time of the window shattering, going by the player's basic digital readout.

Yasmine hit the play button, hearing the mumblings of the shoppers for a few seconds before the sound of breaking glass ended it all. "Go," she told the fox, who then restarted the footage. Seeing Viktor Stanislav get impaled by the arrow was just as shocking as the first time it happened, though it was especially unsettling seeing a seven-hundred-pound polar bear flung back like a sack of potatoes. The moment made Officer Hopps audibly gasp, the poor idealistic bunny was still unseasoned to violent crimes of this nature.

Chief Bogo stayed silent until the muted staccato of assault rifle fire belonging to this 'Leon' coupled with his appearing out of nowhere drew his attention. "Stop the tapes." he ordered to both the fox and the snow leopard, stepping forth and bending over to get a better look at the screen. "Wilde, wind it back a few seconds."

Nick did as instructed, showing the materializing figure of the perpetrator opening fire with an advanced military grade weapon that should have been impossible for anyone to own. "Again." Bogo told the fox who again rewound and played the footage. "Stop it," The old buffalo sighed. "I'm Sorry Yasmine, I didn't want to believe you."

"There's more Chief," the leopardess said with a forgiving but also somber tone.

"Alright, keep it going. Continue after the shooting."

Both audio and visual tapes resumed in near synchronicity, following the chain of events that happened. Yasmine hoped that she wouldn't have to hear that sickly crunch of Moleone's body being crushed but she did and it still made her stomach turn. On camera six they could see Viktor Stanislav coming to, drunkenly drawing his pistol from the hidden holster in his suit in full view of Yasmine who was more occupied with the armored assailant.

They then watched the perp then grab Yasmine and use her own weapon to kill the polar bear, something that apparently drew Chief Bogo's curiosity. "Wait," Wilde paused the tape again, holding on the image of Yasmine and Leon just after Viktor's death. "Why did he do that?" Bogo asked almost rhetorically in a voice above a whisper, drawing everyone else's interest.

"What is it Chief?" Hopps asked.

"It's what he did, the perp could have just as easily used the Detective here as a shield and still fire her weapon on the victim but he didn't. _He_ shielded _her_." Bogo said turning his head to look Yasmine in the eye. "He may have saved your life Detective."

"A gunman with morals?" Wilde proposed with a slight sarcastic tone along with a gesture of his paw only Yasmine and Judy saw.

Bogo rolled his lips. "I'm thinking, he may be more like a soldier. Soldiers have rules of engagement, they try to keep civilians out of the line of fire in combat zones, which is exactly what I'm seeing here." He said quietly as he contemplated the unprecedented situation at hand.

"Oh, that's so much better." Nick deadpanned. "And what do we think about that outfit of his, doesn't exactly look like the kind of stuff any nutjob can pick up on the Urssian black market."

"Never even heard of anything that can make a mammal completely invisible." Chief Bogo admitted.

"It can do more than that, Chief," Yasmine said, raising the Chief's attention once more. "Do you see that distortion over his body?"

"Yes, I wasn't sure if it was a error in the recording."

"It wasn't." Yasmine said with her arms crossed. "The victim managed to get a lucky hit in on the perp and suddenly he had this, I don't know, sheet of gold around him." she said, feeling insane as she simply described what she saw.

"What like the energy shields the GT-One guys have on Space Gate Trek?" Nick said causing Judy to raise an eyebrow, having no idea what he was talking about.

"This isn't a silly television show from ten years ago, Wilde." Bogo admonished.

"You're right, Warstar Celestica was better. But..." Nick then added, to put a pause on Chief Bogo's annoyed rebuke. "What the Detective described is pretty nail on the head, when people start talking about energy shields and other crazy sci-fi stuff _like invisibility_."

"Just play the rest of the tape Wilde." An annoyed Bogo commanded.

" _Who the hell are you?"_ Yasmine heard herself say, feeling embarrassed over how helpless she sounded.

" _Headhunter Sierra-Bravo-Zero-One-Three, but that won't mean a damn thing to you, so...call me Leon."_ He said before disappearing.

"Alright, that's it," Yasmine said almost meekly as she shut off her tape recorder.

Chief Bogo approached her, placing his hoof on her shoulder. "There's no need to feel responsible for this Detective," he consoled. "From that recording, it's clear the perpetrator had extensive training, there's no way you or anyone else could have been prepared for that."

"He took my weapon Chief, he said he was going to…use it!" the leopardess exclaimed quietly in frustration as she swung her closed paws down.

"We'll find him. He's probably just a mercenary hired on by a rival mob to take out Moleone. We'll track him down like we always do, with good old fashioned police work."

"Personally, I think he was messing with you." Wilde offered. "Headhunter, I mean, that's so over the top. He couldn't have been serious."

"It's all we have to go on right now," Bogo said seriously. "Wilde, I want you to make a copy of this recording and hand it over to the lads in computer analysis. You two drive right back to the precinct once you're done here, I'll get someone else to cover your route for the rest of your shift.

"If there's anything else we can do Chief, let us know." Hopps said rather adamantly, bringing a look of worry to bear on her partner's face, thankfully Bogo came to the fox's rescue.

"Afraid not Officer Hopps, you and Wilde have earned my respect for what you did on the Night Howler Case but this is way above your pay grade. The Homicide Unit will handle this case for now, not two Patrol Officers."

Judy looked disappointed and would be unable to work out any kind of negotiation with Chief Bogo as he then left the cramped little security office with Detective Yasmine following shortly behind.

"Chief, I want in on the case, please."

"Last time I checked Detective, you were assigned to the Major Case Squad, not Homicide."

"My case just _became_ the homicide sir. I'm the only person who's had any kind of interaction with the perpetrator who isn't headed for the morgue. You don't think I might just something to offer?" Yasmine asked.

Bogo sighed, probably feeling the long night to come from all this. The buffalo fixer her in his unflinching eyes as his jaw squared. "Alright Barisqa, report to Inspector Feral in the morning." Yasmine was about to argue that she should get to work immediately but Bogo intercepted the point before she could make it. "I don't think we'll be finding a man who can turn invisible anytime tonight Yasmine, not in this weather. So go home and get some rest, come at it fresh tomorrow, that's an order." He said with an authoritative but subtly caring tone.

Now it was Yasmine's turn to let out a tense breath. "Okay Chief, I'll see you in the morning." She bid goodbye as she walked off.

\\\\\\\\\\\O

A fair fifteen minutes later, Judy and Nick were back in their police cruiser just as their doors slammed shut. Nick looked over to Judy as he buckled himself into the driver's seat, seeing a familiar restless look on the rabbit's face. "Uh-oh, Carrots, I know that look." He said, buying Judy's attention. "I know as much as you want to, you can't go crusading across the city like the emotionally unbalanced super-cop you think you are."

Judy shook her head. "Nick, he killed-"

"A mob boss," Nick interjected. "A mob boss that nearly had the both of _us_ killed remember?" Nick reminded. "Judy, how do you think things would go if everyone found out the only reason we were able to crack the Night Howler case was because Mr. Big himself helped us shake down an informant? That you're the godmother to Moleone's granddaughter?" he said poking his forefinger into her vest. She knew what would happen, she'd be kicked off the force the second internal affairs caught wind of either those bits of information, hero cop or not. Not to mention completely invalidate the Bellwether trial and possibly letting that megalomaniacal sheep go free.

"Bogo's given this one to Homicide, let's let the professionals handle chasing the armored sociopath that popped straight out of a Sci-Fur channel original movie." Nick then started the car and put it into gear. "Come on, after we drop off the recording at the station I'll take you out to dinner at this great Khazdian joint I know in Savannah Central, half their menu is vegetarian Carrots, you'll love it." Nick offered kindly in effort to lighten her mood, which managed to work. That sly fox did know what just to say to someone, especially her.

\\\\\\\\\\\O

A month passed after the night of the murders with no sight of the perpetrator, not even a whisper to his identity or where he got that arsenal of his or the armor. Forensics came up with nothing on the perpetrator's boot prints and ballistics turned up a big fat zero on the bullets pulled from Boris Koslov's body or the casings found at the scene. They couldn't find a single manufacturer that produced the undoubtedly expensive 7.62X51 FMJ Armor Piercing rounds the unusual rifle fired, so right now the theory was that the perp used a highly modified assault weapon fitted for custom ammunition which made him all the more scary if he had that kind of sway with black market arms dealers. But in a month, he hadn't reappeared, in fact it had been frustratingly quiet in Zootopia aside from a few odd burglaries at a few warehouses and chemical labs but nothing for Yasmine who so dearly wished for just the slightest of leads on her fittingly ghostly perp. Was he even still in the city at this point? She wondered.

Today was the funeral for Vito Moleone. For the self-styled Mr. Big, it would be a closed-casket affair after the gruesome end he had suffered. Yasmine, only thought it appropriate to watch the procession from the TV in the breakroom. It was disgusting seeing so many newscasters at the Unity Light Cathedral in Savannah Central paying homage to that good for nothing vermin.

"Hey, Detective Barisqa." Judy greeted as she entered. "How's it going."

"Slowly," she admitted, swirling the half-drunk mug of coffee held in her paw, though an amusing thought gave her mood a slight lift and the corner of her mouth curved upward. "So how'd your little date with Nick go? What's this, number three? Four?" she pried at the little bunny.

Judy looked down at the benign white tiling, finding something of sudden great interest in them while her ears folded back as her face formed into an expression of embarrassment. "Hehe, seventeen actually." she admitted. "Well, a lot more if you count those times we ate after work."

Yasmine chuckled. "Girl, you've got him good, that fox must be something special." she said to Judy's smiling blush. "So... have you?" the leopardess then asked with a suggestive motion of her eyes.

The bunny's pupils shrank and she looked ready to bolt out of the room, gosh she really was a prude little farm-bunny, wasn't she? "Um, I mean...we, he and I, uh...Who's that?" Judy asked pointing to the image of a dour elderly bison crossing the camera into the cathedral amidst the gently descending curtain of snow.

Yasmine let out an aggressive huff, upon sighting the mammal. "That would be Maximilian Saxton, head of the mob on the Amurican east coast, they've been trying to nail him since before I was born." Another animal passed, this one a portly brown bear with well-groomed and oiled fur. "And that would be Misha Vostok, son of the gas magnate Alexander Vostok from Urssia, FSB want his daddy just as bad. Those two and more have been pouring in the last fifteen minutes. Honor amongst thieves, right?" Yasmine joked rhetorically.

Judy laughed awkwardly. Ha-ha, yeah. Total scumbags am I right?"

"Completely. I bet you almost every person in that church right now has one kind of mob connection or..." Yasmine's sentence faded as a dark realization crept up on her.

\\\\\\\\\\\O

At the Cathedral, a more somber mood was drawn as the audience of alleged less than reputable individuals filled in the pews. The larger mammals took up the majority of the space while the rodent seating was furthest up near the casket in an arrangement of smaller pews no bigger than a normal dining room table. One honored individual sat in the first row nearest the isle on the right, daughter to the late Vito Moleone, Fru Fru Rodesetti holding her infant kit, swaddled up in a black blanket that matched her own funeral gown. A sniffle emanated from her diminutive snout as she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief with her free paw while her other gently shook her kit. Her husband sat next to her, stroking her shoulder in can act of comforting the grieving shrew.

"Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Rodesetti?" asked a slightly unpleasant voice that Fru Fru discovered belonged to an equally unpleasant looking but somehow familiar weasel dressed in the attire of an attendant from the funeral home Fru Fru's family had contracted for this occasion.

"Oh, yes, what is it?"

"You got a phone call for ya downstairs. It's from a doctor, said it was something important about yer baby."

The shrew's eyes shot wide. "What?" she gasped as she stood. "What did he say?"

"Just that he needed to talk to you right now." The two then left, following the weasel down a flight of stairs while the badger priest walked up to the podium to begin his sermon. The weasel lead the couple downstairs to a cramped little storage office with an old, wired rodent-sized phone on a small dusty desk.

"Hello, Doctor?" Fru Fru asked. Her husband, Robert waited patiently, watching his wife's face twist into a look of confusion as she spoke with whoever was on the other end of the line. "Who is this?" Fru Fru asked with a mixture of outrage and fear which only grew more fearful from then on. "Who's them?" she asked. A second later, a thundering sound shook the ceiling above them, timed with the erupting bark of gunfire and screams following in its wake, causing the little shrew to turn pale right as her kit started to cry.

\\\\\\\\\\\O

Yasmine was eternally thankful the Cathedral was only a five minute drive from the precinct, she just wished she realized what was going to happen sooner. By the time she reached her car her radio blew up about gunfire coming from inside the cathedral much to her own anger directed at herself. Pulling up right behind the armored SWAT van, about twenty other cruisers followed with their sirens blazing. The Patrol Officers quickly disembarked and ushered the crowd on morbidly curious onlookers on the sidewalk away so they could set up a cordon.

Lieutenant Dwayne Alphason was first out of the back of the van. In full gear, the tundra wolf looked like he had doubled his already impressive mass. Yasmine stepped out of her unmarked cruiser and he immediately sighted her.

"Detective, I advise you stay back, we don't know what the situation is in there." he said with his natural air of authority while his SWAT team poured out and assumed tactical positions behind the parked cruisers save for the two snipers that entered the apartment buildings across the street from the cathedral.

"I know what's going on a lot better than you do Lieutenant," the leopardess rebuked. "The perpetrator from my case is in there massacring anyone with a connection to organized crime!"

"The guy that took out Moleone?" the Lieutenant asked, suddenly taking Yasmine very seriously.

"Yes!"

"Shit," Dwayne swore, keying his radio. "Dispatch, this is Alphason, we have a code one-one-seven here. Heavily armed individual assaulting a public space, requesting additional units and SWAT teams ASAP from all available precincts."

 _"Copy that Lieutenant, units are on the way, no ETA at this time."_ came the dispatcher's reply much to Yasmine's consternation.

"Lieutenant, we need to get in there now, before he gets away!" Yasmine emphasized, feeling like the blind leading the blind right then.

"I'm not sending anyone in with that armored maniac until I know we've got tactical superiority." Dwayne replied. "And I'm certainly not risking any of my guys' necks for a bunch of crime lords and their stooges."

"Come on move it lady!" the voice of an officer shouted from toward the gates to the Cathedral. Yasmine turned to see he was speaking beside his cruiser to a reporter from ZNN, one which Yasmine was a little more than familiar with. Leaving Alphason, she jogged on over through the wet slush covering the road to Officer Fangmeyer, knowing the tiger would have little success with this particular reporter.

"I'll handle this officer," Yasmine said, placing her paw on his arm. "Go help set up the cordon."

"Fine by me." He replied before walking off in a huff.

Yasmine locked eyes with the reporter, a snow leopardess like herself who was wearing a far cooler expression than one who was standing at the site of an ongoing shooting should be. "Thank you for that Yasmine, I was worried he would never leave us alone." She said, referring to the zebra cameraman who looked more than a little anxious to be standing where he was pointing the camera at the doorway to the Cathedral.

"That wasn't a favor for you, Fabienne." Yasmine spoke sharply to her older sister. "You and him need to get out here right now, there's a madman with a rifle inside that place doing god knows what and you need to leave before he decides to take what he's doing out here!"

Fabienne for her part looked unfazed by Yasmine's warning. "There are over fifty officers out here, Yasmine. I think we'll be fine." She said nonchalantly, causing her younger sister's temper to simmer.

Yasmine grabbed her by the arm, holding it uncomfortably tight to break through that ego of hers. "Fabienne, you don't know what this man is capable of. He's a cold-blooded murderer."

"Let go." She said, shaking her arm free of her sister's grip before something dawned on her. "Wait, do you know who it is? Mathew, turn the camera around." Yasmine was flabbergasted at Fabienne's obstinacy and the gall she was acting with. "Does my fur look okay?" the zebra answered her question with a thumbs-up.

"You put that camera down or you'll be eating it." Yasmine threatened, making the zebra visibly hesitate and look to Fabienne for direction.

"Keep rolling, signal Mark in the van that I have an interview."

"I cannot believe you Fabienne!" Yasmine exclaimed, reaching the end of her patience. "God, you haven't changed one-"

"MOVEMENT!" an officer called out.

Yasmine's attention snapped to the now open doorway to the Cathedral, as did Fabienne and her cameraman.

And there he was, Yasmine's ghost. No profile, no determined species, history or even rumor, just a name and a possibly falsified military designation.

He stood there in the doorway, clad in that odd olive armor and striking a bold posture with his left side angled forward. In his right paw, Yasmine could see the glorified sword of a knife glistening with crimson along its edge. The other paw held something else, though she couldn't rightly tell what it was, just that it was large, brown and…

Oh god.

Leon held it up for the world to see, broadcast on live television across the world, the severed head of Misha Vostok.

 **Author's Note: I'll take your Red Wedding and raise you a funeral.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: Long awaited, I know. I can only work on a single chapter at a time per month and Guiding Fire has been my main focus for some time. On top of that, Finals hit, which set me back further. Moving on, while I normally hate it when author's insert music into their work for the reader to listen to concurrently (and it does not at all work) I like it when digital artists list what kind of music they listen to for inspiration while drawing. So, here's what I listened to for inspiration when I wrote this chapter's action scene.**

 **Track List**

 **DMX - X Gonna Give It To Ya (SØKØS Remix)**

 **Queens of the Stoneage - Millionaire**

 **Doom REMIXED - By Leslie Wai**

 **Red vs Blue Season 10 OST - Pray**

 **Red vs Blue Season 10 OST - Fragments**

Law of the Jungle

Chapter 3: The Multi-Killionaire

Seconds passed, feeling like minutes. Yasmine wanted to throw up but her body wouldn't even move as her eyes were fixed on the dead, drunken expression on the bear's face. Everyone gaped in equal horrified shock until Alphason broke the sickening silence.

"Open fire!"

As a fusillade of gunfire erupted, followed in short succession by screams from the crowd passed the police cordon a block away. Yasmine grabbed Fabienne and her cameraman by their coats and threw all three of them to the road beside the cruiser.

For the officers left to face the Spartan, they witnessed him in quick order toss the bear's severed head like one would a playground ball right into Officer Fangmeyer's face before the tiger had even gotten his second shot off, stunning both him and the other officers around, a tactic meant to buy the Spartan precious seconds as he then dashed forward. In three great athletic strides he covered half the distance down the broad set of stairs leading to the cathedral and its gated churchyard that hugged around the building. The knife in his hand slid back into its sheath and both hands drew from behind his back, two narrow cylinders were drawn and thrown with a supernatural swiftness. The pair of objects soared past the gate roughly twenty feet above the street before their fuses ran out. Like miniature suns they burst into blinding white balls of hot white again and again coupled with a thunderous series of cracks that boomed over the gunshots.

By the time everyone had regained their senses, the very real headhunter was nowhere to be seen.

A storm of voices from the officers around filled the void asking in various fashions where he had gone.

"Stay alert! All SWAT Teams, we are storming the building now! Riot shields front and center!" Alphason barked at the top of his voice.

From behind came the tromping of boots through the slush as the SWAT team made their assault but Yasmine suspected Leon was already long gone under his cloak of invisibility. The Leopardess rose off of the zebra and her sister who still looked to be in a state of shock.

"Fabienne?" she asked pulling her older sister up by the arm and shoulder to sit against the door of the cruiser. Her elder sister's eyes continued to gaze off into the horrid nothingness of what she had seen. "Fabienne!" Yasmine yelled in sequence with a firm shake of her shoulder. Fabienne blinked her eyes as she finally came back to the present. Her jade eyes glanced around until finally settling on Yasmine.

"Y-Yasmine, he-was that? Did he-" she asked in a state of lingering shock. She'd need to see a trauma specialist, hopefully Fairfield, Precinct 1's crisis negotiator was in the mobile command center. He knew how to deal with shock better than she did.

Her view drifting rightward, Fabienne gasped. When Yasmine looked, she saw that Fangmeyer appeared to have been knocked on his ass by what was on the ground next to him as Misha Vostok's head laid on its side with blood trickling out the slacking jaw and the stump of the neck staining the wet grey slush into a dirty red.

Seeing how distressed her sister was, Yasmine stood herself right as Fangmeyer discovered the head as well, flinching before quickly kicking himself away.

"Shit!" was all he could say, probably still in a kind of shock himself from actually getting hit by it. Before any more cameras saw it, Yasmine took off her coat and threw it over the morbid sight, leaving her torso in naught but her police-issued bulletproof vest and the lavender shirt beneath.

"Fangmeyer," Yasmine said, approaching the tiger. "I need you to get those two to Sergeant Fairfield." She ordered, waiting a moment before she summed up enough courage to speak her next words. "I'm going in."

Fangmeyer nodded but Yasmine caught his eyes flick back to the shrouded head. "Okay,"

The leopardess stood back up, facing the cathedral and the undoubted horror inside. "Okay…" she echoed a little above a whisper before setting off.

Stepping through the gateway each footfall felt like a journey in itself and when Yasmine got to the stairs, it may as well had been a mountain. It didn't help when one of the SWAT Team members lurched out the doorway retching out what little the hyena had in his stomach. Passing him hesitantly, the first horrid sight Yasmine was greeted with was the rest of Misha Vostok in the lobby just a couple meters from the swung-open door. That pretty much set the tone then on. How…how could one person do all this?

\\\\\\\\\\\O

Leon ended the call to Moleone's daughter. Ditzy spoiled bitch was lucky he had been an orphan and didn't like the idea of making one of her daughter. That out of the way, it was time to say hello to the world.

The church, or whatever kind of religious building this was had a massive eighty-foot tree at the far end from the main entry with a massive hole in the ceiling to let in fresh sunlight. To Leon, it proved to be a remarkably easy way to infiltrate the building and hide himself in the tree's upper canopy. He didn't know, or really care, if they worshiped the tree, but it gave him an easy in. The cathedral's layout was similar to a church except the floorplan of the Latin cross was more of a circle where the cross would have happened. Further down was more familiarly churchlike with three sections of pews, middle, left, and right. The pews on the left and right were bordered by two levels of aisles, one directly over the other just four meters from the floor and bordered by thick stone pillars that bared large carved busts of various animals, like a massive marble totem pole, which Leon thought was a little creepy.

Far below he could hear the church's crooked religious leader delivering his sermon for the little rat Leon had squished. The Spartan sighed. "Okay, that's enough of that." Leon said quietly to himself as he reached to retrieve a detonator from one on his back pouches opposite of his magnetic arrow quiver. "How about this? Dear Lord, we criminals, sadists, shit-bags, and otherwise terrible people are gathered here today because we all fell for Leon's big plan to draw all us idiot scumbags together under one single roof to present to him, a densely-packed target-rich environment. Now let us pray to this big stupid tree and kiss our collective asses goodbye." He finished raising the detonator and flicking the safety cap off with his thumb. Then without hesitation mashed the same thumb forcefully down on the bright red button.

A dense thunderclap sounded inside the church and Leon sprang into action, dropping through the branches with rifle in hand. Below the religious leader, a badger, stumbled around clutching his head and torso from wounds suffered from the explosion that killed all the mammals in the rodent pews. Falling a dozen meters through the air, Leon's boot smashed in the badger's chest upon landing, not the least slowed down by the fall and moved forward without a moment's hesitation while raising his MA5C/SOCOM to his shoulder. Ahead the survivors of the explosives were still recovering from the initial shock and unready for the real hell he was about to unleash. For maximum effect, Leon had explosives planted on the outsides of each section of pews to concentrate the targets in the centers and slow anyone's escape by a few seconds. The Spartan was here to make a statement and being sloppy by letting targets escape wouldn't do him any good.

His finger pressed down on the trigger, letting fly a wide spray of automatic fire that cut through bodies and pews one after the other. 32 rounds on the rifle's ammo indicator dropped to 0 in a matter of seconds and it took less than two for the Spartan Headhunter to replace the magazine and ready the action. Leon began stepping to the left as he unloaded again to hit the targets further back.

By the time the rifle ran dry again, the panic started in all but the most hardened of criminals like Saxton who in the pews to Leon's left had a look of fury in his eyes Leon found amusing. Judging by his shredded suit, he had caught some of a nearby explosion and was running on an adrenaline high. The Spartan's left arm reached around under his cloak to latch his rifle to the magnetics on his back as he charged forward. The bison followed suite, putting his thick skull and horns forward as he ran with a savage yell. It was stupidly easy for Leon to grab the presented horns and flip himself up on Saxton's massive shoulders and then using the extra strength afforded to him with his SPI armor's MJOLNIR GEN-2 upgrades, snap his neck.

Now in the lethal zen of Spartan-time, Leon looked ahead, seeing the Canidian wolf, Carl DeVere being helped up by his chief lieutenant, Grey Sawback, a caribou. It only took a moment in the timeframe before Saxton's body hit the floor for Leon to pull his massive, wide bladed fighting knife and toss it into the right side of De Vere's chest.

Leon jumped from the bison's back while drawing the combat knife he kept along his collar under the bandoleer of grenades. In his way stood another underworld boss lured here by whatever bizarre sense of honor these people had. It was a black rhino, Hazim Van der Horne, now looking very afraid having seen how fast Saxton went down. He threw a panicked punch that Leon ducked under easily and in 1.5 seconds and four strokes, the Spartan slashed his belly, pectorals and throat before weaving past the male who had yet to even realize he had been killed.

Far ahead Misha Vostok was waddling away down the aisle toward the door to the lobby. In a quick flick of the hand, Leon brought the blade of the knife up in between his fore and index finger and then launched it accurately into Vostok's rear thigh some fifteen meters away, bringing the fat little bear tumbling to the ground.

Leon was almost on De Vere when Sawback pulled an automatic pistol from his coat. Only a couple rounds zipped over Leon's head as he dashed under the line of automatic fire before he got to the buck, grabbing the caribou's wrist and twisting the pistol around to spray the pews of panicking mobsters behind. Sawback then got an elbow in the face to distract him while Leon yanked his fighting knife from De Vere's still living chest and whipped back around 180 degrees to take Sawback's head off in one swing. Leon flipped the bloody blade around to hold it backhanded and turned it on De Vere again, hammering it down into the other side of the wolf's chest, smashing ribs and piercing out his back. De Vere made an ugly gagging sound as Leon twisted the blade out.

Looking to his motion tracker, the targets on the other side seemed to have overcome the initial shock of the planted explosives and were running for the exit. Like hell they were getting out of here alive. While sheathing his knife, Leon leaped up from the pews, using them as a stepping stool to jump up to a sculpture of a tiger's face on the nearest pillar getting the Spartan some five meters above the floor. More than enough for what he had planned. Bracing a foot against the back of the pillar, he launched himself further into the air before activating his armor's thrusters. Now halted in midair, much to the amazement of some, his cloak fluttered over the steam of particles as the circle being projected on his HUD filled clockwise with a glowing ring and Leon cocked his left fist back. Like at living missile, he struck, his aim upon the area nearest the door to which no soul ever reached it. The concussive wave of artificial gravity and scything splinters of wood blasting all persons and objects not sturdy enough to withstand the exotic force within a three-meter radius of the Spartan.

Leon stood himself with the crowd of fifteen or so mobsters now stopped dead in their tracks, frozen as the Spartan drew his M6G and the .45 he took from the kitty Detective. Locking the rear sights of the pistols together, he cocked the weapons and stepped forward with both raised. The pistols sang independently of each other until only a handful were left. It was by this time the magnum clicked empty when the muscle running security outside busted in through the front door at last. Leon wasted the last few mobsters cowering on the ground, depleting the last of the rounds in the .45 right about when one of the incoming thugs opened fire on him with some kind of PDW.

Leaping over the pews into the outside aisle covered by the long second level aisle, Leon went prone and activated his armor's camouflage. Like a chameleon, the advanced photoreactive panels mimicked the world around, making him nigh-invisible so long as he moved cautiously enough. Leon holstered the pistols and unhooked his bow from its latch attached to his quiver along with a fistful of arrows held in his right hand. They weren't his own, those were far too valuable to waste. No, these arrows he'd nicked from an inattentive archery shop owner in the Rainforest District who liked to take long lunches.

"Spread out!" a heavy Urssian accented voice called out. "Surround him! Hurry!"

"Fat chance." Leon said to himself as he pulled his photoreactive cloak over his shoulders and the hood over his helmet to further obscure his silhouette. Half crouching, he moved against the wall in the direction of the giant tree where he knew there to be a small spiral staircase up to the upper aisle while watching the ignorant thugs close in to where they thought he still was.

"He's gone!" a black bear with a sawed-off double-barrel called out.

"What?" came the panicked words from a red wolf. "What do you mean?" the wolf continued while swift and quiet footsteps spirited the Spartan Headhunter up the staircase. "Where the hell did he go man? We had him surrounded man!" he said as Leon now looked down on them in amusement.

"Calm down!" a large polar bear barked with the same voice Leon had heard just a minute earlier, he must be the de facto leader now, Leon reasoned. "Spread out, he can't have gone far. You hear me you bastard!" The Urssian bear roared into the air, his words directed at Leon. "You killed my brother Viktor last month and I'm not leaving here until I've skinned you alive."

 _Cute, he thinks he's a threat._ The Headhunter thought to himself as he watched the thugs, twenty in all, begin searching the church turned warzone. Leon waited until they were all a good distance from each other before he pounced. Jumping clear across the church floor at a pair of bighorn rams. The unfortunate one walking behind the first received the Spartan's knees to his back, smashing him against the floor, in the process wrapping the high torque bowstring over the ram's neck. Leon rolled over the ram, and in one fluid movement, severed the ram's head from his body. The entire process happening before the other ram just ahead knew what had happened.

Leon took his bow in his right hand with the arrows as he finished the rolling garrote, taking one of his throwing knives from the pouches on his torso. And as the other ram spun around, got the knife driven straight into his chest. In pained shock, the ram staggered back in the second it took for the Spartan to perform a wheel kick that sent him flying backward to collide with a group of three other thugs. Point-three-seconds afterword, the timer to the small C-12 explosive charge inside the knife's handle detonated, killing all four with the force of a standard fragmentation grenade.

The explosive knives were weapons of his own design, Leon's personal response to Brute spike grenades but given a human twist. Based on the kunai style of knife, normally he used them on Hunters or unarmored Brutes and _maybe_ the occasional Grunt for a good laugh. Overall, they were good for a distraction with a little shock and awe added in.

His presence now known and his camo gone, Leon wasted no time bringing his bow up with an arrow drawn from the bundle in his hand. He sent two in immediate succession into a pair of bison on the left side of the church, striking them both through their thick necks and severing their spines.

Not wanting to remain a sitting target, the Spartan rocketed off, using the front pew as a stepping stool again to launch him over the heads of the red wolf and black bear now standing in the right-side aisle. The bear fired a spray of errant buckshot from his double-barrel, just missing Leon as he launched another arrow at the apex of his arc, the razor-tipped missile traveling down through the bear's skull and body until exiting through his legs. Leon landed and the wolf tried to bring up his SMG but Leon pushed it aside. With the middles of his last two arrows in his hand clutched between his fore, index and ring fingers, he punched forward at full force, skewering the red wolf through his heart. The canine yelped in pain as his end approached. But before it came, Leon pressed on his offensive, grasping one of his arrows and braced his bow on the wolf's chest, notching the arrow. In a savage move, Leon pulled the arrow back through the wolf's body and loosed it through the red wolf and into a cougar standing in rapt horror on the left side of the church's tree some fifteen meters away. A blip on the motion tracker to his left flank caught Leon's attention and his right hand darted forward to grasp the bow's handle and the fabric of the wolf's suit as the canine took a volley of bullets from the polar bear's machine pistol. Leon's right hand pulled another of his kunai and tossed it into the neck of the ibex standing across from the middle pews. Leon turned back before the knife exploded, notched the remaining arrow in the dying wolf's chest with his left hand and loosed it into the eye socket of a male rhino further back.

With no more need for a corpse, Leon stabbed another kunai into the wolf's trachea before kicking him ahead at the polar bear who was actually smart enough to throw himself away from the ensuing explosion. By this time, Leon had launched himself over the bear's prone form to another group of thugs, Leon's bow once again on his back. He landed in a roll, coming up to a lanky cheetah holding a lever-action shotgun. The Spartan Headhunter shoved the barrel of the weapon left, pressing it against the cat's chest and immobilizing his arms while Leon broke the cat's upper femur near the hip with a powerful blow that sent the cheetah to a knee. Leon, with a hold on the shotgun's barrel and the arm it was strapped to, twisted the cat's body around until his opponent was in a vulnerable backward leaning position for the kunai in Leon's right hand to drive down into the cheetah's chest. As the cat's body hit the floor, it was struck by the Spartan's armored leg in a wide-arcing kick that sent the cheetah back into a wildebeest and an antelope.

In a blink of an eye before the explosion, a burst of fire from a jaguar's SMG on Leon's left got caught by his shields as he used the momentum of the kick to spin around and swing the butt of his newly acquired shotgun into the jaguar's gut with a force greater than a Major-League player's swing. The cat doubled over and the Spartan spun the shotgun around in a downward arc to his six o'clock and immediately blasted a hyena coming at him with a stiletto at point-blank range, taking the head clean-off. A tactical roll left dodged him out of the way under another burst of fire from the surviving polar bear and placing the pained jaguar in the line of fire, at least until the shotgun barked again its fiery blast, blowing the cat over. Leon stood himself from his knee, working the action two more times as he fired, pivoted and fired again before finally throwing the now empty weapon straight into the Urssian's face which hit him hard enough that the bear dropped his automatic pistol. That left just one other last hostile, a moose who then received a trio of high-velocity arrows in the torso in a process that took the Spartan less than half a second to draw, aim and shoot with each piercing his liver, stomach and heart.

Leon could see the polar pear's blip on his motion tracker less than two meters behind him, likely a last desperate charge where he'd try to leverage his perceived size and weight advantages. _Good fucking luck._

Leon twisted around, still in the zen of Spartan-time, seeing the incoming left swipe of the polar bear's clawed hand-like paw. Leon caught his bow around the wrist, then twisted it 180 degrees, turning the string into a wire saw noose that immediately removed the offending paw. Using his boosters, Leon performed a split-second slash across the Urssian's thighs with his fighting knife. A roar of pain was cried out as the bear fell to his knees. Leon meanwhile, had threaded the Bear's right arm inside his bow's arch and ran it up to the shoulder where he drove his knife around into the bear's back, sending the Urssian into a full kneeling position. He twisted the bow around again, making the cutting noose that sliced through the flesh and fur of the upper arm down to the bone in an instant, and with a quick yank that gave too. Now completely disarmed, the Headhunter moved in for the kill. Dropping his bow, Leon braced his left leg against the Bear's back with his knee at the base of the skull. He wrapped his hands around the muzzle and began pulling.

On a whim, Leon decided to give the bear some final departing words. "Don't worry, your brother died like a bitch too." He said before he snapped the polar bear's neck back over his knee. As the body slumped to the floor, the Spartan retrieved his knife.

Leon, the last man standing once again…like always. Like the way it had been since Reach.

The growing cacophony of police sirens outside shook Leon of his stupor, reminding him his objective hadn't been completed just yet. He then sheathed his knife and picked up his bow from the floor and latched it to his quiver. Walking to the right side aisle, Leon pulled his M6G and promptly reloaded it as he stepped around the corpse of Maximillian Saxton and then holstered it once more before doing the same with the Detective Kitty's Type 11 Colt.

Pacing down the aisle, he checked each pew for any targets smart enough to hide instead of run, activating his VISR to assist in the process. Shortly thereafter, he found a Tanuki whose name Leon had forgotten but knew was from the Red Lotus crime syndicate only a few hundred miles to the east. The racoon dog thought he'd be safe playing dead but was sadly mistaken as was a possum two rows down from him.

Coming to the corpse of the black bear, Leon wrenched the sawed-off double-barrel from the dead bear's paw and examined it in his left hand. Clicking the release switch for the break-action, the front fell forward and the spent shells ejected themselves from the tube via some kind of mechanism that decently impressed Leon enough that he decided to keep the bear's weapon for himself and shoved it behind his back, wedging it between a strap and his armor before moving on.

A flicker of movement on the motion tracker caught Leon's attention just a few meters ahead. He followed the point to a hippo who had been sitting just left of outside of the middle pew where one of the explosives had been planted. Whatever animal had been sitting there was unrecognizable at this point but the hippo for the most part, was intact. He'd obviously caught a lot of shrapnel and the right side of his body was covered with second-degree burns. The VISR detected no life signs, so that left one possibility.

In one quick motion, Leon grabbed the Hippo's corpse by the collar and threw him into the aisle, revealing two otters in his pistol's sights, both huddled around two smaller otters that must have been their children. They whimpered as they clutched one another as the Headhunter loomed over them.

Leon recognized the male otter from his cross-referenced list of targets he'd made from the guest list. "Emmitt Otterton," Leon said with a relaxed tone. The otter hesitated to open his eyes and look up at the Spartan. "Age: thirty-nine. Occupation: florist, husband and father of two. Former target of the night howler attacks last year. You don't have any criminal background like every other asshole in here, so why the hell are you?"

"P-please don't hurt my family, I'm begging you."

"Answer the question." Leon said sternly.

Otterton stuttered as his body shivered in fear around his family. "I-I'm a florist, I-I did the flower arrangement for Moleone's daughter's w-wedding. That's all I swear! It was just work a-and he paid me triple my rate to do it. Please, I had to, th-that money is going to help put my kids through college!"

Leon raised his pistol away. "Relax." he told the otter. "If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead by now."

To this, the otter's two boys peaked open their eyes and their father's expression became somewhat dumbfounded. "Y-you're not?"

"I'm a Spartan, I'm not a complete soulless sociopath." Leon sighed briefly. "The cops'll be in soon, just wait here until then. _Don't_ make me regret this." Leon said as he then walked on, catching another blip on his motion tracker less than a meter away. On the ground laid a kangaroo clutching his bleeding shoulder with a paw as he tried to move the corpse of a zebra with his other in attempt to hide underneath the pew itself. The kangaroo's eyes darted up to the Spartan in terror as the magnum's barrel was directed his way.

"And if you want my advice," Leon shouted back to the otter before his weapon coughed twice, and a pair of .44 slugs were buried in the roo's chest. "Get better friends."

There were no further contacts after that, leaving just the bloody trail left by a certain plump bear with a knife in his leg.

The door ahead was already ajar and only needed a casual push from Leon to get through. The complaining squeak of the door's unoiled hinges announced the Spartan's presence to Misha Vostok who lay on the floor, looking up at the Leon in rapt horror as blood continued to steadily leak from his fatty leg where the knife was still buried. Vostok panicked and began clawing toward the main door frantically. A few unconcerned steps forward and a boot pressed firmly to an ankle brought Misha's attempted escape to a quick halt as the bear cried out in pain.

Leon went ahead and holstered his magnum, he wouldn't need it here. "And where do you think you're going with my knife?" he said as Leon then leaned over and yanked the knife out with Misha letting out a muffled scream into the lobby's deep green carpet. As the bear grit his teeth while weeping tears of pain, Leon took his foot off the bear's ankle and took another couple of steps to where he was standing over Vostok.

"P-please don't kill me!" he begged pathetically. In response, Leon knelt down beside a near petrified Misha Vostok who quickly tried to compose himself. "Please. My father, he is rich man. He-he will pay you anything you want. Thousands! Millions!" Leon said nothing, instead reaching out to the jacket of Misha's suit and used it to wipe the blood off his combat knife before sheathing it.

"What, you don't want money?" the bear said with complete disbelief. "I-I can get you women. Ever hear of Urssian mail-order bride?" He grinned through the pain. "It scam, but for you I make good deal! Any species you like. PERMANENTLY." He added with a lingering panic. "Or as long as you want them!" he nervously smiled again, revealing four gold teeth in place of his canines. "They good, get on all fours whenever you like, yes?"

Leon drew his fighting knife from its sheath, causing the bear's eyes to dart around even more nervously. "What, you like cubs? I can get you cubs! Here!" Misha tried reaching into his trouser pocket with a shaking paw and pulled out his phone. While he fumbled with it, Leon raised up his knife in front of his face, his eyes focused on the pair of dog tags on a ball chain wrapped around the knife's cross guard. He read the name, holding on to her memory like a prayer, a mantra.

"Here! Here!" Misha shouted as he held his phone's screen out for Leon to see the disturbing image with Misha prominently in it. "Yeah, this one good little girl cub. My favorite back in Mawskva. They young but they know what males like, yes?" he chuckled with the pain in his leg twinging his voice. The Spartan's grip tightened around his knife to Misha's obliviousness. Leon snatched away the phone, not wanting to look at the disgusting image a moment longer. As much as he hated to, he slipped the phone in one of his magazine pouches as it might still contain intel he could use later.

Misha's paw snapped back against his chest as he was back in full panic mode. "I no understand, what do you want?" he begged.

A frustrated snort came from the Spartan. "What do I want?" Leon asked, his first words to the tubby pig of a bear. "I want to go back to Reach, to New Alexandria and a dozen other places. Far away from here. But no, I'm _stuck_. After all this, after all I've _fucking survived_ , I'm _here_. In this stupid place," Leon chuckled, his chortle rising to a full if short-lived fit of nihilistic laughing. "Fighting my own goddamn war all over again. Ain't that fucking hilarious?" he asked as he laughed a little more.

Wide eyes and a perplexed and frightened expression painted the Misha's face. Leon probably seemed completely crazy to him, didn't he? "Y-yes, yes funny, very funny, heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-h-hrrk!" Misha gagged as found the Spartan's knife lodged through his neck. That fucking piece of shit bear just had to open his mouth.

"I was speaking rhetorically, asshole." Leon growled. His left hand wrapped around Misha's muzzle and shoved him back to the floor. Leon looked up at the door as the sound of the bear's muffled, gurgling screams filled the room, and only partly drowned out inside of Leon's helmet by his own heavy breathing as he ended the bear's life. Adrenaline rocketed up his heartrate once again. His anger for this shit-heel of a living being and his training guided his hands to do the deed but he found no pleasure in the act. A fight he could find enjoyment in, revel in, but this? Without a Covenant beneath his knife, the act felt hollow and unfulfilling, and in the remotest way, wrong. His hand sawed the large knife back and forth only three times before the laser-sharpened blade cut through Misha's brain stem, leaving only a bit of fat and skin at the throat as the last linkages the head had to the body and with a quick slice, that too was severed. The sounds from Misha finally ceased and Leon was left with only the sounds of himself breathing out his anxieties and the pain of his nostalgia.

"All right," he said to himself. Leon grabbed a clump of Misha's disgustingly over-oiled fur and stood up with the bear's head in his hand. Marching to the church's double-door entrance, all it took was a swift kick to bust it open.

Leon stood before this world in plain sight. Dozens of police cars filled the street directly in front of the church. By one, Leon spotted the little kitty detective who'd he had gotten the .45 from. Was she still mad? He wondered, knowing nothing on the psychology of police officers and less so of civilians. Her unexpected appearance was more of a novelty to the Spartan as he then ignored her and lifted Misha's head for everyone to see. To let them know just what Leon could do, how far he could go, his ultimatum to his ultimatum to come not long from now.

So, he then spoke to the recording he had been making with his helmet camera since a minute before his thumb first hit the detonator. "Hello everyone, my name is Leon. And I'm here to save your stupid fucking planet."

 **Author's Note:**

 **So Leon is a bit of a complicated Spartan. He's not a "Master Chief" or an "Emile" kind of Spartan, though there's some Jonah in him, no doubt. But overall there's no one archetype I stuck to when I created his backstory. He has his own past and it has shaped him differently than most Spartans seen in the Halo universe. On the tech side, I hope I got across that Leon's bow is a bow made** _ **for**_ **Spartans and so has an incredible draw weight that only a Spartan with MJOLNIR can effectively use or even handle. I'll get into the story behind that later. I originally planned for this chapter to be longer but I feel I had to get something out at this point. I'll try to get the next chapter out not long after the next installment of Guiding Fire which is a good way done.  
**

 **Adjunct: Since we know so very little about the world beyond Zootopia which is something I have hinted about so far with names like Urssia, Khazdia, and Amurica, I am going to dedicate it as a place to do some supplementary world building and to start it off, I'm going to begin with Zootopia itself. Speaking for myself, when I saw the city of Zootopia it was hard for me to visualize it in the context of a real city. Why did it exist? Given the opening where a young Judy delivered her expositional school play, we know that predator and prey species did not get along that well beforehand, and examining Zootopia's existing architecture, the city itself doesn't seem to be older than a century at most. I don't think predators still hunted the prey species prior to its founding a century or less ago but I think they certainly fought one another for more traditional reasons (land, greed, nationalism, grudges, etc.) So Zootopia exists (or initially founded) as a kind of neutral zone that gradually became a melting pot metropolis like New York City or Hong Kong are, and being a neutral zone, the city would need to be self-governed to eliminate any partisanship to one nation or another, operating instead as an autonomous region, further reinforcing the Hong Kong comparison. So, we have a city that is in equal parts New York, Hong Kong and Geneva, now why does it exist in the first place? For Zootopia to exist under this model, history would have had to happen one of two ways. Either it was created by a number of nations for completely altruistic reasons** _ **"where predator and prey live in harmony and sing kumbaya…"**_ **to quote one sarcastic Nickolas Wilde. Or…there would have had to have been a REALLY bad war, probably a world war scale conflict. But I'll cover the details of that another time. For now, I'll state that Zootopia exists as a special autonomous region founded by the People's Republic of Amurica (boy am I a goddamn tease) following their War of Liberation from the Urssian Empire as a part of the Great War. The headquarters for the League of Species is found here at the House of Nations in Savannah Central.**


End file.
